Popular operating systems such as the Disk Operating System (DOS) and Unix currently allow a user to customize their environment based on their particular requirements. This concept was originally introduced by IBM by allowing a user to have a unique ID used to access the system. The ID was accessed via a logon procedure and resulted in increased security and a customized environment based on their preferences. However, this processing only occurred once when a user logged on to the system.
Unix and DOS provide similar capability. In DOS and UNIX the initialization of the system occurs once when a user first accesses the system. If a user changes to another directory, no change in the environment occurs in.
Examples of another user environment system for a program is found in US Pat. No. 4,858,114 which discloses an emulation system for automatically modifying I/O translation tables in programs designed to run on different computers. The technique disclosed in the '114 patent is another example of environment settings being prepared ahead of time for use when a program is first executed with no capability to alter the settings after the preliminary invocation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,006,992 discloses a process control system with reconfigurable expert rules. The rules control the execution of various processes in the plant environment. However, the rules do not automatically vary. A supervisor must manually vary the rules based on the needs of the particular process and the supervisors knowledge of the environment.
The applicant is unaware of any teaching in the prior art that automatically customizes a system environment for a user based on the entry and exit of a current active computer disk directory.